The sound bowled over the onrushing opponents and sent others of them away howling. So, too, the eye-searing discharge of electrical energy played havoc upon the foe. It struck, leaped in great arcs, striking again. It burned, charred and killed indiscriminately with an awful snapping and crackling sound as the lightning discharged itself into flesh. Between them Gord, Chert, and the bard had slain a half-dozen of Evaleigh's retinue of warriors. The single magical attack that Greenleaf unleashed from his staff felled that many more and a score of the rest as well. Even so, the four heard the crowd behind howling and raving as they attacked the thorny barrier.
"That is a marvelous sword, Gord," the one-eyed troubador said with grim admiration.
"In a manner of speaking, yes," Gord agreed. The young adventurer unconsciously sent his gaze to where the shriveled husk of the dead hag who had been pretending to be Evaleigh lay decaying into noisome powder. "It finds the heart most often, and from those of evil it draws forth all force."
"I'm prone to favor old Curley's staff there," Chert said reflectively as he rested both of his massive, calloused palms on the steel butt knob of Brool's thick haft. "Still, considering the number of the foes still quick, and their obvious desire to rend us limb from limb, I think we need to save our breath for the coming fight."
Gellor laughed at the sarcasm, and Gord was nod ding grim concurrence, when the rotund half-elven druid said, "If you enjoyed the effects on those dirty buggers, wait until you see what's coming!"
"Why?" Gellor asked.
"To teach them a lesson," was all the druid said in reply.
"No need," Gord said. "All we need do is to mount the dais the hag stood on."
"Let's get out of this godsdamned shithole, then," Chert rumbled. "I'll have enough of killing the blasters soon enough anyway!"
Without hesitation all four climbed up the one step that would move them from wherever they actually were, take them from this place of evil and illusory familiarity to some new danger. The powdery husk of the destroyed hag from the pits was crushed underfoot as they mounted the dais step.
The sylvan scene vanished, but the green light did not. They were surrounded by a deep, emerald color, the hue of sunlight filtered through fathoms of seawater. Massive sharks swam nearby, and not one of the four could say a word about it.
In fact, the suddenness of their precipitation into the submarine dilemma gave them only seconds to react. Perhaps they could survive for a minute or two, even though they had been given no chance to draw air to fill their lungs prior to coming into the underwater trap. Before the last of their oxygen was gone, the step that led from this new place of death had to be located.
Visibility was limited to twenty or thirty yards. Within sight there were several possible places where the next stair could be located. Ahead was a thick growth of giant kelp, to the right a gradual drop leading to rocks with a cave opening plain to see. Off to the left were a dozen giant clams, while behind them, Just at the limit of sight, was a long coral reef. Tiger sharks swam overhead and around. Big blue sharks circled there, too.
Gord, his hair waving above his head as if it were some fine, black sea growth, tugged at Gellor's clothing, pointed, and began to move as rapidly as he could in the direction of the huge mollusks. The others had no real choice. They followed.
The clams varied in size. The smallest ones were less than three feet across, the larger ranged from three to five feet, while one monster was fully eight feet in diameter and nearly as deep. That one was Gord's target, and the young thief darted straight for Its yawning valves. Both failing lungs and closing sharks lent speed to his movement.
Just short of the thing, Gord stopped, picked up a stone from the sandy bottom, and hurled it toward the clam.
The missile traveled in slow motion, but Gord's aim was true. Into the open shell it went, and as it struck the muscle within, the clam closed its shell with such force that there was a current created of sufficient strength to make the young adventurer sway. His three comrades arrived just after that, and the stiff-finned sharks were not far behind, making rushes and coming ever closer.
Chert was in the lead. He saw Gord place his feet upon the closed shell. Then he was gone. The big hill-man immediately imitated his friend's action. Gellor followed next, with Curley bringing up the rear. An attacking blue shark was but a fraction of a second late. Its teeth closed on empty water, and it shot off into the green gloom with dull disappointment registering in its minuscule brain.
They had been transported to a tiny island of sand and rock. Nothing grew there, and around it was nothing save an endless expanse of ocean. The sun was overhead, beating down remorselessly. There was neither shade nor fresh water.
"Marooned with a vengeance," Gord noted. "But at least it should be a simple task to locate the magical portal to escape the place." All but Gellor voiced ready agreement. They set to work immediately, searching the few dozen square yards of the islet for the hidden stairstep. Not even the troubador's enchanted ocular detected the slightest hint of what they sought.
"Now here's a terrible thought," Greenleaf finally said. "What if that filthy scum put a false step into that last trap?"
It was something that none of the four adventurers had considered. Could Gravestone have managed such a dweomer? A second gate to take them into a place with no escape? "It might be done," Gord said, "but the Law of Balance isn't that weak — not yet. We are simply looking in the wrong place, I think."
"Where else can we look?" Chert asked crossly. Gellor pointed outward and swept his arm in a complete circle. The barbarian gulped audibly. "Yeah. I hadn't considered that, comrade," he said, eyeing the rolling waves with obvious distaste.
"No, again I disagree, bard," Gord said firmly. "Each time we have had to actually go
up.
To search under the water would be folly, I think. There has to be a place above...."
Greenleaf shrugged and commenced going over the little bump of dry land again. The other three followed suit. They passed back and forth across the islet a score of times. Still nothing. There is no step up," Gellor said finally. "You were wrong, Gord."
"Perhaps, but perhaps not. I have another thought on the matter."
"Well, we have time enough to hear it, I think," Curley said, sitting down with a huff of tiredness as he did so. "But let's not be too long about it. The salt water is drying, and my garments are beginning to become itchy and irritating."
The initial step was nearly transparent, all save Gellor were blind, and it was separated by a gulf of ten feet. Now, why shouldn't the location of the next place we must ascend be likewise hard to locate?"
"No reason at all," the one-eyed bard admitted. "But where do we look?"
"Up!" said Gord with firmness.
"Into thin air?" Curley said with a derisive laugh.
"You can turn into a bird, can't you?" Chert said with sudden inspiration. "Why not do that? Take a little wing around this stinking bump and see what's visible from up there!"
Gord slapped the broad back of the barbarian. "I hadn't thought of that, my hulking friend, but you hit the target fairly there. Curley, do just what Chert has suggested."
In a moment the druid wavered before their eyes, his outline shifting, his form condensing, until a big pelican stood before the three. Gord made upward gestures with his hands and stamped his foot impatiently. Curley-pelican gave a squawking protest but broke into a lumbering waddle, beat his wings, and flapped heavily into the air. The bird then commenced to flap its slow way up and around until it attained a height of a hundred feet or so, then tilted, spiraled, and glided down in a corkscrew path to land beside them.
"Well?" Gord demanded irritably.
"Braawk!" the pelican said with equal ill temper.
"All right, all right," the young champion said with resignation. "Please, respected druid, return to your true form and relate what you saw."
Greenleaf seemed to sprout out of a pelican. When his feet were no longer webbed, but the properly booted appendages of a half-elf, the druid beamed a smile at the trio of expectant observers. "It is there, plainly visible, not more than twenty feet overhead. The step is directly above the center of the islet."
"How do we get up to it?" the hillman queried.
"The rope again, I think," Gord murmured as he freed the coil and began to work it into a noose. The rest was easy going, comparatively speaking. The line anchored itself around seemingly nothing, Gord swarmed up it, and hung from the top of the Gord as if levitated.
"It hasn't taken me to some other place yet," he called down, "so I suppose the rope is hanging on the edge of the portal. Chert, help Curley to climb, and I'll pull him up before I change position. Then you come up and haul Gellor on after you. Be sure one of you brings the line, too!" When the druid arrived and forced Gord to move closer to the center of the opening that was invisible save from above, the others saw Gord vanish. Chert then climbed up and took Green-leafs place. The druid, too, disappeared as he moved elsewhere.
"I don't know how to free the rope," Chert said loudly to the climbing bard. "Can you manage it?"
"No, blast it!" Gellor was thinking furiously as he replied. He could almost recall Gord's magical words of command that controlled the enchanted horsehair line, but what if he made a mistake? Just then he attained the platform, and the matter was taken out of his hands. As Chert moved to make a place for the bard to clamber onto, he tripped over his own foot and fell. Clutching out desperately, one of his huge hands grabbed onto Gellor's studded leather jack and held fast. Both men were thus precipitated into an unceremonious heap within the next of the intradimensional pockets devised by Gravestone.
There was nothing in the new place. Some grayish illumination seemed to fill the air, but there was no sun, stars, moon, or even sky. All of them were within a bubble — a bubble of stone. "Out of the great worm's hole..." Chert said slowly as he looked around.
"And into the maw of the waiting dragon," Gord supplied. "It is worse than before!"
"This time I might have to agree." Gellor said. "I see no step anywhere, and there can be no invisible one in this place."
"Which of you has the rope?" the young thief asked without taking his eyes off the dome of the ceiling overhead.
"Ah, well... err..." Chert managed.
"It is behind. Lost, Gord, by no fault of ours," the bard told him. How exactly he didn't relate to Gord, naturally. "Did you think it would be useful in this cyst?"
"Perhaps..." the young acrobat-thief replied distractedly, seeming to dismiss the magical Gord as unimportant. "See there at the apex of the ceiling? That appears to be a hooked stone projecting there."
"I see it. So what?" Chert demanded.
"It seems evident that we escape this trap by going there," Gord related patiently, still studying the dome of granite. "As feet are placed on the ceiling, the counterpart of this floor, it is my guess the individual will be sent on to the next stair."
The dilemma was finally solved by Gord. He rummaged around in another of the magically expansive pockets hidden in the thick girdle banding his waist. There were several enchanted rings therein, and one possessed power over air. "It is sufficiently strong to carry two upward. You, Gellor, will wear it, and bear Curley upward with you. As your boots touch the ceiling, you must drop the ring from your finger. Be swift, for if it is transported through the portal with you, then Chert and I will be stranded here forever."
The troubador managed the trick — barely! Gord then jammed the rune-worked circlet of ancient metal upon a finger and floated up, he and Chert clutching each other like long-lost relatives reunited after a generation of separation. A push against the curving wall, a mid-air somersault, and the two were with their comrades.
The place all four were in now was a totally alien one, its landscape of such distorted shapes, sky of jarring coloration, atmosphere so noxious that all of the adventurers were shaken to the core. Whatever it was that pervaded this far world, its effect was to erode the mind, tear away sanity, insinuate madness.
Somehow Gellor managed to begin a heroic ballad, draw forth his little kanteel of ivory with silver strings and gold inlays, and turn back the insanity that would have overwhelmed them otherwise. The stair was the most revolting feature in view, but they found the mental strength to mount it nonetheless.
Next was a Jungle, but not of vegetation. The wild growth around them consisted of various tentacles. Some were one color, some another, with suckers, poison, claws, barbs, and so forth. Each set of the waving members sought to seize and slay and devour. Two, three, four, five, even as many as a dozen tentacles surrounded each of the sphincterlike mouths into which a victim would be thrust. The solution was simply to hack and slash the attacking tentacles, to strike them with magic and weapons. It was the thickest and largest cluster of the things that hid a step in the midst of the viciously hook-fringed and venomous tentacles.
That step took the four into a reeking moor whose fetid, miasmal air was filled with swarms of biting insects and whose mud and water swarmed with leeches and similar forms of hungry parasites. The place where the next step was located was evident; an expanse of high ground far in the distance. It lay but five or six leagues distant as the crow flies. Translated to the real terms of the place, that meant five or six days of hard going on foot through the low-lying, infested swampland.
They tried that mode of travel only for an hour. It was soon evident that they would be infected with a half-dozen diseases, anemic, and worm-ridden at the very best after much more of the same. Then they heard the monstrous bellowings and croakings and splashings of the native fauna of this stinking swamp world, and that decided the matter promptly. Curley Greenleaf, as a last resort, used some of his remaining magical capability to create a fiery vehicle that would carry them to the ridgelike step. It took the four of them quite a while to build a fire of sufficient size to effect the magic, but it was accomplished, and the aerial Journey was simplicity itself. The chariot set firmly down upon the monstrous-sized next step.